Tag: scout

The idea of this quilt all started with a photo I pinned on Pinterest years ago. A beautiful collection of antique pennants sewn onto a quilt. I never forgot that pin/photo. Pictured here:

Fast forward to 2018. While in JoAnns Fabrics one day I passed by Girl Scout Pennant/Banner Felt fabric by the yard. I fell in love and the pennant quilt I had originally pinned several years ago came rushing back to me. I didn’t buy the fabric that day. Instead I took a photo and posted on Facebook, anyone know a girl scout I want to make this quilt! Then I remember my cousins daughter was in girl scouts. I called Layla, she’s 10 and said she would love a quilt. So my mind started turning with ideas and HOW to put it together.

After several days it came to me. I didn’t want to make the quilt from scratch all I wanted to do was ADD the felt banners/pennants so why not use an already quilted quilt. Searching I found a simple (not very thick) quilt at Target. They didn’t have the color Layla liked so I ordered her favorite color of the quilt online at Target. Why did I choose a thin simple quilt? First, I had to be think to add bulk on top of it so it had to be able to fit into my sewing machine so I could machine stitch the banners on top. Second I kept it simple solid color as to NOT over whelm the eye, a noisy pattern quilt would have distracted your eye from what you really wanted to see the banners/pennants. Could I have made the quilt? Of course, however I like to speed things up so I bought one already made!

My JoAnns didn’t have the Daisy pennants so I ordered those online. The Girl Scout Ranking is Daisy, Brownie, Junior, Cadette, Senior, and Ambassador. They do NOT make the Cadette, Senior, and Ambassador Pennants. Since I own Digitizing software called HATCH by Wilcom AND I have an embroidery machine I made those pennants and I also did her Full name.

How did I get those OTHER felt pennants? I used the negative space from cutting out the original Brownie and junior pennants. Seen Here in RED outline.

So I digitized/embroidered Cadette, Senior, Ambassador, Last Name, and her First Name.

After that we laid it out and prepared to machine sew the banners/pennants to the top of the already done simple quilt.

You MUST use a walking foot! YOU CANNOT DO THIS WITHOUT A WALKING FOOT. I did a fancy stitch at first. DON’T DO THAT! Learn from my mistake, simple straight stitch to sew them down. The two sides and the bottom. I worked on sewing ONE at a time so I would then spray adhesive spray on the back of the pennant and stick it down where I wanted it. Then i lightly pinned it into place. Then I went and straight stitched it down on my machine. Once I did that I took it and laid it back in the floor again and did the process all over again. DO NOT do more than ONE at a time the adhesive will NOT stay sticky long enough, and it will shift even with your pinning it down. Slow and steady ONE pennant at a time. Easy straight stitch.

Once you get them all down you then can do a decorative stitch OVER your simple straight stitch, AGAIN I REPEAT DO NOT STITCH IT DOWN USING DECORATIVE STITCHES FIRST. They are so complex and dense that it will shift on you, no matter what, AND your walking foot does prevent some of the decorative stitches from stitching out correctly.

Once they were all down I decided NOT to use the hang tags on the pennants so I cut them off. Originally I was going to attach badges to them (front & back), but felt isn’t strong enough to hold them from being torn off. So I ended up cutting the hanging tabs off.

I have never done prairie points before and I loved the look, I wanted those on this quilt to add a little bit more POW or POP to the finished quilt. It took me days to figure out how to attach them on an already quilted quilt. I didn’t want the raw edge showing and I didn’t want to add another binding, or rip out that binding and add the prairie points and re-stitch it back together. What I ended up doing was using Ribbon! The edges of the ribbon shouldn’t fray and it would hide the exposed raw edges of the prairie points. Worked great! So I did a zigzag stitch on top of the quilt, prairie points, and ribbon. DONE!

Lets talk price. How much did this quilt cost me to make. Well each yard of the felt cost me $15.99 to $12.99 Even with a discount. I bought a tad to much fabric but I plan on using the left overs for pillows for her. Pennant pillows, i had three banners left over from the quilt. (this was also a pintrest idea) Cost of everything $234.67 in fabric and the pre done quilt. I spent 22 hours making this quilt also. So if you are going to make this be prepared for the cost, otherwise you can purchase a CUSTOMIZED one from me at my store WWW.THEVINTAGEMINT.COM